Court Digest

Oregon
UPS driver suspected in I-5 shootings held on bail
PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — The Roseburg man suspected of shooting cars along Interstate 5 in Oregon from his UPS tractor-trailer rig remained in jail Tuesday on $1 million bail.

Kenneth Ayers, 49, has pleaded not guilty to charges including attempted murder, assault and unlawful use of a weapon that were filed in Jackson County after his arrest last week, The Oregonian/OregonLive reported.

He was arrested 60 miles from where a woman was shot in her car between Gold Hill and Central Point.

A grand jury is expected to return an indictment this week, said Virginia Greer, deputy district attorney for Jackson County.

State police said investigators believe Ayers shot at least seven vehicles on I-5 while driving his UPS truck -- in Josephine County on May 12, June 22 and July 9; Jackson County on June 2 and last Wednesday; and Douglas County on June 15 and July 7.

The charges Ayers faces so far are related to one of the interstate shootings in Jackson County -- the one last Wednesday -- and a shooting July 9 in Jackson County that injured a man. The same .45-caliber gun was used in both shootings, police said.

State police and prosecutors have declined to comment on a possible motive.

Police found a gun consistent with the gun used in the shootings, Fox said.

The shootings began shortly after Ayers’ route changed and sent him from Roseburg south on I-5 and also along Oregon 140 and Oregon 62, police said. Before that, Ayers traveled north from Roseburg toward Portland.

UPS declined to comment Tuesday on the investigation, Ayers’ route change or if he is still employed by the company.

Ayers was appointed a public defender. A message left at a number listed for the attorney Tuesday by the newspaper wasn’t immediately returned.

New York
Ex-pharmaceutical company boss faces insider trading charges
NEW YORK (AP) — The former head of a pharmaceutical company was arrested Tuesday in California on insider trading charges, accused of feeding secrets that enabled friends and family to earn over $700,000 illegally.

Sepehr Sarshar, 53, of Encinitas, California, was charged in Manhattan federal court with securities fraud, wire fraud and fraud in connection with a tender offer. He was released on $1 million bail after an initial appearance in San Diego federal court.

Authorities said he provided inside information in 2015 about a pending $3.2 billion buyout offer from Israel-based Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Limited, a generic drug giant, to his friends and family so they could trade securities in Auspex Pharmaceuticals, a company he founded.

Those close associates included a college friend, his then-girlfriend, another longtime friend, and a close relative, authorities said.

William F. Sweeney Jr., head of New York’s FBI office, said it seems obvious that a company’s secrets should not be shared and yet “time and time again we see where those privy to a company’s inside information pass it on to family and friends.”

Acting U.S. Attorney Audrey Strauss said Sarshar’s friends and family made nearly three-quarters of a million dollars.

A message was left with Sarshar’s defense lawyers.

New York
Judge sides with prosecutors over treatment of Epstein’s pal
NEW YORK (AP) — Prosecutors won’t have to immediately divulge the identities of three women who say financier Jeffrey Epstein and his ex-girlfriend conspired to sexually abuse when they were teenagers, a judge said Tuesday.

Defense lawyers were premature in asking that she force the government to name the accusers of Epstein and British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell, U.S. District Judge Alison J. Nathan said in an order.

Lawyers for Maxwell had asked the Manhattan jurist to force prosecutors to reveal the identities of the women, saying they needed sufficient time to investigate the allegations and prepare for a July 12 trial.

Prosecutors opposed the request, saying they wanted to protect the privacy of victims of sexual abuse and because of their concerns that defense lawyers might try to use information from the criminal case in civil litigation involving Maxwell.

The judge, though, said prosecutors had only just begun turning evidence to be used at trial over to defense lawyers and discussions between lawyers on both sides about disclosures such as which witnesses might testify had not yet begun.

She said defense lawyers could renew their request after a deadline passes in November for prosecutors to finish turning over evidence.

Maxwell, 58, has pleaded not guilty to charges that she recruited girls as young as age 14 during the mid-1990s for Epstein to abuse. Prosecutors claim she sometimes joined in the abuse.

She was arrested last month and is held without bail at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, where her lawyers also have asked the judge to intervene to relax restrictions on her that they say harms her ability to prepare for trial.

The judge declined to do so, but she directed prosecutors to update her every three months on Maxwell’s jail conditions, particularly as it relates to her access to legal materials and her ability to communicate with her lawyers.

Epstein committed suicide a year ago at a Manhattan federal jail as he awaited trial on sex trafficking charges.

Washington
Farms pay $325K to settle guest worker mistreatment claims
YAKIMA, Wash. (AP) — Two farms in Washington state have agreed to pay $325,000 to settle accusations that they mistreated foreign guest workers.

Green Acre Farms and Valley Fruit Orchards of Yakima County have reached an agreement to end years of litigation with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the Capital Press reported. The dispute was over alleged discrimination against Thai workers hired through the H-2A program.

While a federal judge threw out the EEOC’s lawsuit twice previously, the agency has “remained committed to appealing and carrying this on,” said Beth Joffe, attorney for the farms.
“The growers decided they needed to stop the bleed, so to speak,” Joffe said.

The federal agency will seek to distribute the $325,000 to 105 former guest workers from Thailand and the farm operations must follow certain practices and policies regarding their workers.

Those injunctive terms are “an affirmation of what Green Acre Farms is doing and has been doing for many years,” Joffe said. Valley Fruit Orchards has ceased agricultural operations.

In 2010, the federal government accused labor contractor Global Horizons of abusing Thai guest workers in violation of criminal human trafficking laws.

Although the criminal charges were later abandoned, the federal agency pursued a civil lawsuit against Global Horizons and the two Washington farms that was filed in 2011.

Litigation against Global Horizons was dropped because the company accepted a $7.7 million default order.

Ohio
State high court: Private company workers can’t sue over urine tests
COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — Private company workers who provide drug test urine samples under direct observation can’t sue over invasion of privacy, a divided Ohio Supreme Court ruled Wednesday.

The court’s 4-3 decision overturned a lower-court decision that had sided with two former employees of a plastic housewares company in northeastern Ohio.

The company said the employees lost their right to sue when they agreed to the test under the company’s substance abuse policy.

The employees unsuccessfully argued that Ohio law recognizes a right to unreasonable invasion of privacy.

Ohio has long recognized the right to sue over invasion of privacy, but that right is not absolute, Justice Sharon Kennedy wrote for the majority.

“An employee who consents to drug testing cannot claim that the testing was highly offensive and invaded his or her right to privacy,” Kennedy said.

Justice Melody Stewart, writing the dissenting opinion, said the employees, in consenting to the test, were not told they would be directly observed while providing a sample.

“What indignities must an at-will employee suffer to avoid losing his or her income and benefits before the employee has a cause of action for invasion of privacy?” Stewart wrote.

Pennsylvania
Kids-for-cash judge loses bid for lighter prison sentence
PENNSYLVANIA?(AP) — A federal judge upheld the 28-year prison sentence of a disgraced Pennsylvania judge who locked up thousands of juvenile offenders while he was taking kickbacks from the owner and builder of for-profit detention centers, prosecutors announced Wednesday.

Mark Ciavarella, a former Luzerne County juvenile court judge, had been seeking a lighter sentence after three of the 12 counts of his 2011 conviction were overturned on appeal.
U.S. District Judge Christopher C. Conner ruled this week that Ciavarella, 70, was not legally entitled to a new sentencing hearing.

“To be abundantly clear, if we were authorized to reduce Ciavarella’s sentence, we would decline to do so,” wrote Conner, citing Ciavarella’s “abuse of public trust by an elected jurist and the resulting harm to vulnerable juvenile victims.” He said Ciavarella “refuses to acknowledge the scope of his remaining crimes” and stands convicted of taking bribes.

In what came to be known as the kids-for-cash scandal, Ciavarella and another judge, Michael Conahan, shut down a county-run juvenile detention center and accepted $2.8 million in illegal payments from the builder and co-owner of two for-profit lockups. Ciavarella, who presided over juvenile court, pushed a zero-tolerance policy that guaranteed large numbers of kids would be sent to PA Child Care and its sister facility, Western PA Child Care.

Prosecutors said Ciavarella ordered children as young as 10 to detention, many of them first-time offenders convicted of petty theft and other minor crimes. The judge often ordered youths he had found delinquent to be immediately shackled, handcuffed and taken away without giving them a chance to say goodbye to their families.

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court threw out some 4,000 juvenile convictions after the scheme was uncovered.

The judges “betrayed their community and deserve the substantial punishments they received,” U.S. Attorney David J. Freed said in a written statement Wednesday.

Conahan, 68, the other judge in the scandal, was sentenced to more than 17 years in prison. He was recently released to home confinement with six years left on his sentence because of coronavirus concerns.

Pennsylvania
Man accused of killing missing wife, burning body more than 8 years ago
The trial has begun for a central Pennsylvania man accused of having killed and burned the body of his wife, who disappeared more than eight years ago.

Hap Seiders, 66, of Silver Spring Township was charged seven years after prosecutors allege he killed his 53-year-old wife, Rabihan, and incinerated her body in the fireplace of their Cumberland County home, PennLive.com reported.

Chief Deputy District Attorney Courtney Hair LaRue said the couple’s “volatile” relationship was defined by “power and control.” After he was charged with domestic violence in 2011, the prosecutor said, she got into a home safe, took valuable coins and hid them from her husband in a safe deposit box to try to regain some control over her life.

Hap Seiders, a coin dealer, then “lured” Rabihan back into the relationship in hopes of finding the coins, she said. The woman then disappeared, last seen at a drug store near their home in March 2012. Prosecutors alleged she was killed and her body burned “to bones and ashes.”

“Because he could not control her, he erased her,” LaRue said, citing closed blinds at the home for days after the disappearance and black smoke emanating from the chimney. She also cited a drop of blood on the carpet, her DNA on a knife and bone fragments found in the fireplace.

But defense attorney George Matangos called the allegation of Rabihan’’s death shaky, saying there was no DNA to show that the bone fragments belonged to the victim or are even those of a human female.

“The government can’t prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Rabihan is dead,” Matangos said.

He told the jury that the woman saw his client as a “mark” after the two met at a casino in Atlantic City where she worked as a masseuse. After a “whirlwind” romance, she moved in days later, and during their relationship stole $3 million worth of Hap’s property, including gold bullion worth $1 million that has not been recovered, Matangos said.

“She wasn’t a woman in trouble,” he said. “She was a woman who had a plan.”